Understanding Poetry: The Boxer

Paul Simon and Bruce Woodley’s poem “The Boxer” tells the story of a down-and-out boy who wanders through the world looking for a place to call home. There are three elements that stand out in this piece: tone, symbolism, meaning, and style. Not only do these elements grab the reader’s attention but they formulate the opinion and feeling of the reader. Studying “The Boxer” multiple times brings these elements to life even more.

In “The Boxer,” tone stands out from the very beginning to the very end. Throughout the poem, the tone portrays a very dejected, desperate and regretful person. However, the tone takes a twist in the last line of the poem: “But the fighter still remains” (Simon & Woodley, 1968, p.50). This final line implies that despite all of the trials, there is still a strength that cannot be destroyed. Complimenting tone is the symbolism throughout. “The Boxer” is rich with physical manifestations of symbolism through the railway station, Seventh Avenue and the reference to New York winters.

Style, the final element, is the focus of the poem that ties it all together because of how the language is conveyed. The structure of “The Boxer” is very broken and sporadic in line length. It could be argued that the style of sharp lines and varying stanza lengths is reflective of the author’s own brokenness and chaos. The differing possibilities make the reader wonder, “to what extent is it the voice of the poet, to what extent the voice of the reader, and to what extent some other voice altogether” (Chambers, 2008, p. 105)? This is why the style is the dominant element of the poem, the tone and symbolism are beautifully enveloped within it and this layering of elements influences the reader’s overall opinion of the work.

In reading and analyzing “The Boxer,” my opinion was definitely impacted by the elements to a large extent. The way Simon and Woodley arrange, express and deliver feeling influenced my perception, “with every reading, the poem lives to mean again.” Webster goes on to say that creativity is both social and psychological (Webster, 2012, p. 25). In “The Boxer” we see this vividly through social encounters on Seventh Avenue and the psychological appears in the first line when Simon and Woodley start with “I am just a poor boy” (Simon & Woodley, 1968, p. 5). The first line reiterates the boy’s perception of himself, that he is “just” poor and nothing else.

“The Boxer” uses tone, symbolism, and style to portray a broken person, a person looking for a place to belong. In the end, we are not sure if he has or ever will find a place to belong. Simon and Woodley masterfully use reasoning in poetry to illustrate the brokenness of the boy and succeed greatly in influencing the reader’s opinion through the use of element control.

References

Chambers, S. (2008). Reading poetry wrong: Prosody and performance. English Language Notes, 46(1), 105-111. Retrieved October 11, 2013, from http://search.ebscohost.com/

Simon, P., & Woodley, B. (n.d.). Forms of poetry. In Journey into literary (pp. 5-50).

Webster, J. (2012). Reading a poet reading. Journal of Literary Semantics, 41(1), 25-46. Retrieved October 11, 2013, from http://search.ebscohost.com/